Success stories from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts often follow a certain pattern: Young student with a particular talent receives additional targeted training to nurture that talent and turn it into a potential career. Mark Seliger’s HSPVA origin story went a little differently.

He applied hoping for admittance into the school’s art department, but his portfolio wasn’t acepted. “It was just heartbreaking for me,” he says. “So I made a quick switcharoo.”

Seliger’s brother, a theater student at the school, suggested he apply to the media technology program, which involved learning about radio, television and photography. Seliger at the time had dabbled in the dark room but says he “wasn’t very interested in taking pictures. I liked making prints, but that was really it. But my junior year — environmental portraiture, documentary and printmaking changed the winds for me.”

Seliger further studied photography at East Texas State and first considered leaving Texas, an experience involving a conversation with a friend, a dark-green Buick LeSabre and some beers. Seliger recounts that moment in “Mark Seliger Photographs,” a briefcase-sized anthology of his work since he left Texas for New York, where he planned to work for a year before returning home. Instead Seliger has spent the past three-plus decades as a photographer for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and GQ, having shot all manner of instantly identifiable covers for the magazines.

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‘Mark Seliger Photographs’

Abrams Books

256 pp., $75

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“Mark Seliger Photographs” — released last week — draws from Seliger’s deep body of portraiture of entertainers — Jerry Seinfeld as the Tin Man, Tom Hanks with a monkey’s hands on his face — as well as his other work, including collections of photos from the aftermath of 9/11 and of Holocaust survivors.

Seliger recently talked about some of the photos from the new book.

Q: The covers offered interesting contrasts. The Kurt Cobain photo is of his face with lots of information in the props. The back of President Barack Obama’s head on the back cover is more minimal.

A: That’s a good observation. I guess it reflects two sides of my brain. One is reductive and interested in a very minimal experience. The other is very rich and theatrical. There’s a lot to be said for executing a big idea. But sometimes you can say something a lot easier and have a lot more impact with the idea of simplicity. I’ve always personally been drawn to both worlds. I like being able to create the big image but also doing something scaled back and more emotional.

Q: I used to go look at the Brooklyn Bridge most mornings before heading to the subway and going to work. Your photo reminded me of how different it looks in the morning before the sun is up.

A: That landscape really started to become an idea just through the observation of fog and weather. I think you can see and observe more of a place or a city when it’s almost empty. It gives it this atmosphere … the structures and places have an almost painterly feel to them that is iconic. I think that is a separate feeling than you’d get on the West Coast.

Q: How did you approach the Curtis Mayfield photo? He was bed-bound after that stage accident. But the clutter in his surroundings gives the photo an interesting texture.

A: That was an afterthought because we didn’t know what we were going to find when we arrived. I walked in to meet him the day before the shoot, and I wasn’t aware what his condition would be. I knew about the injury. So I talked to him a little bit for some background information, and what I came away with was this honesty and integrity about the way he lived his life. So what I saw in this room was him lying face up in bed in a room completely cluttered with this stuff. So I asked if I could build a scaffold above him and take the picture from above. Which I guess was pretty … touchy since he was paralyzed because something had fallen on him on stage. But he was frank. He said, “Listen, this is where I am at this point in my life. I’m fine with this being honest.”

Q: How do you know when you’re going to need a prop? The Kanye West photo is striking because of his grille. But I assume that was already on hand.

A: I shot that picture while I was doing another assignment. He was in the studio listening to the music of the band I was shooting. I didn’t know he was going to be there. So he was walking out and talking, and I loved the grille and asked if I could take the photo. It was just two frames on a different roll. The high-concept shoots require a lot of preparation and thought. Like Amy Schumer in the chorus line with the “Star Wars” Stormtroopers. That’s at least a week and change of preparation. But there’s something like the John Lee Hooker picture. That’s just about having some vision to see what it could be like stripped down.

Q: The Lyle Lovett essay about truth in your medium was interesting. It made me think about the idea of façades with the Chris Cornell and Little Richard photos. And Lou Reed, too. Some of these subjects were covered in makeup, and others have lined faces. Some are people, and others are people assuming personae. But even a façade conveys some aspirational truth — hiding your age, for instance, speaks to an anxiety. That said, Tony Bennett at 90 is almost infuriating for how young he looks.

A: Tony, I invited him to the studio to do a birthday photo. That just seemed like a landmark moment, Tony Bennett at 90. But there was a real honesty in the way we work and communicate. Little Richard, that was shot in a ballroom in a hotel in Nashville. He was very reluctant to take his glasses off. I kept asking if he’d do one photo without them. He was like, “No, no, I look too old with the glasses off.” Yet when he took them off he gave me that incredible expression for one frame and then put the glasses back on. So I got lucky. What I love about Lyle’s essay is he captured in words what people go through when they’re sitting with a photographer. They don’t always know the photographer. So you know you’re about to embark on something, yet you have to have some trust.

I remember the first time I met Lyle, working together in Los Angeles. I was such a fan. That was one of the first times I remember being incredibly intimidated to meet somebody. I was such a fan of his music; I remember thinking I wanted to make a picture that would be memorable. So what do you do? I did a few portraits that were more theatrical. But then I set up a white background, and it was a pretty quick moment. I decided to cut off the top of his head and experiment with different types of framing. I figured it was dumb. I mean, it’s Lyle Lovett, with that incredibly beautiful coif that is his trademark, essentially. But then I got the contact sheet back and realized, “Well, no other photographer cut off his coif.” So it became a special image.

Q: About another Texan: I love the Willie Nelson portrait. General perception of him is as this laid-back, anything-goes guy. But seeing him without the tightly wound braids reminded me that while his music has room for a little improvisation, it’s still the result of years of repetition and studied work. It felt like a hidden vision of an otherwise ubiquitous icon.

A: He came to my old studio, and I remember thinking something about his profile was so remarkable. Maybe it didn’t really dawn on me until I started to print it in the darkroom. But it was striking, that view of him. It was almost like I’d found this Curtis image of him. It felt like an accidental homage to Edward Curtis, even though that wasn’t my intention. Again, I was such a big fan that it was intimidating at first, but he was so effervescent and funny. It’s like he’s a wise man and a wiseass at the same time. One minute he’d tell the dirtiest, filthiest joke you could imagine. The next he was being a poet and taking part in a great conversation. I could remember every bit of that session even if I hadn’t taken any pictures.

Q: There was a quiet, ashen quality to New York for days after Sept. 11. I thought the portrait you shot of the firemen captured it in ways that words don’t.

A: A dear friend of mine at the New York Times was hunkered down in that area. He and I met there, and we walked around what was just the most horrific crime scene, essentially. At one point, they had to shut it down. But there were so many firefighters from different firehouses still trying to find their fallen brothers. When these two gentlemen passed, it was like a funeral procession. You could feel the weight of it, and the sadness. I asked if I could take a quick photo with my little point-and-shoot. I don’t typically take those kinds of pictures. But it changed the way I thought about photography. Being able to marry the idea of emotion and what’s going on through an expression of the landscape, which in this case was the twisted debris and these ruins. It was impactful and dark. I didn’t print that picture for years. Maybe six or seven years later I finally felt like I could print it. Now you go down there and see people taking selfies like it’s a tourist spot. That gives me a pretty uncomfortable feeling.

Andrew Dansby covers music and other entertainment, both local and national, for the Houston Chronicle, 29-95.com and chron.com. He previously assisted the editor for George R.R. Martin, author of "Game of Thrones" and later worked on three "major" motion pictures you've never seen. That short spell in the film business nudged him into writing, first as a freelancer and later with Rolling Stone. He came to the Chronicle in 2004 as an entertainment editor and has since moved to writing full time.